Ingredients

Originally associated with Russia, Slavonic, Baltic and Scandinavian countries, vodka has become…

Method

Slice the chillies and mix with the vodka in a large bottle or jug. Leave for 4-5 hrs. Strain out the chillies and pour back into a bottle to store until needed. Just before giving away, decant into smaller glass bottles, pop a whole chilli in each and label.

Comments (31)

This is great - though obviously depends on the type quantity of chillies you use. I wanted something with quite a kick for someone who has extreme chilli tolerance levels I used 4 Thai chillies, sliced lengthways down the centre, to a litre of vodka. The heat and a nice chilli flavour was apparent after a couple of hours. I left it overnight before straining, and have a hot, but not unbearable,drink that would be great as a shot, or make a perfect Bloody Mary base. As I'm giving it as a gift - I'll add whole chilli for decoration later on, as I suspect the heat will continue rising the longer it's in the bottle.

Made this last Christmas as a gift for various friends. Unfortunately the vodka was ridiculously spicy even though I had it marinating for less time than stated and was only in the cupboard a week before gifting. I used green chillies instead of red, though they weren't very hot ones... I'm not sure what went wrong really! The feedback I had was that it was too hot to drink pleasantly, but did make a good forfeit in christmas or drinking games! It didn't matter too much really, but now my friends are rather wary of my homemade gifts. Going to try the christmas cream liqueur from here this year, I really hope that one can't go wrong!

Made this last year for presents for a couple of friends that are chilli mad! They both loved it! However, one friend commented it does get hotter with time (over months, not days!)... don't know if this is due to the whole chilli in the bottle or whether that just happens anyway. Will be making again this year for sure :)

Does anyone know if you can do this with green instead of red chillies? Will it affect the flavour? I have red to pop in the bottles to decorate but my local tesco only had mixed bags of chillies so I have a load of green to use up, and I'd like to use them for this.

Made this for New Year, using two fat red chillis including the seeds, leaving them soaking for about 4 hours. Perfect hit of chilli but not so hot you couldn't drink it. Stored it in the freezer so it went nice and syrupy. If you like chillis it's very good indeed.

Tip- dont add 2 dried habaneros and a piri piri and leave for 7 hours.... one chilli would have done. Its like drinking fire- hot but really good. Even better in a chilli bloody mary. No Tabasco needed!

Made this as presents for my brother and Uncle, but did it in two seperate batches. My brother's I did for about the right time of "marinating", and he said it was quite nice, and a bearable heat. My Uncle's got accidentally left over night (I forgot about it!), and lets just say this had more of a kick to it! I left the seeds in. The chillis in the supermarket were too fat to put in the bottles I had (500ml each), so I bobbed a birds eye chilli in each bottle instead which worked fine. Definitely one to do again - maybe as stag do gifts or amusing birthday presents.

Made this last week and left it for a week before straining and pouring into bottle. Very nippy! However a strange thing happened which I am hoping someone can give me an answer for. When bottling my vodka, I have more than the 1 litre that I put into the jar. How can this be as it is only vodka and chillies. I did wonder if my 16 year old son had drank some and put in some water to replace it! Would be grateful for any comments.

I wanted a really strong flavour - bit of a kick! So I used 3 small chillis (including seeds) and left for a week - WOW, what a flavour! Couldn't drink too much in one go, but great for parties as shots :0) If it's in a well sealed bottle it should last 6 months.

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